I'm Facebook "friends" with Julian Lennon. John's son. Which is funny. I mean, I know him only from his first solo record, and as John Lennon's son, the one Paul McCartney wrote about in "Hey Jude." And he doesn't even know I exist. That's a weird, social media friendship indeed. Still, I "friended" him a couple of years ago, and I get updates from him most every day.
Julian comes across to me as an "enlightened being." He is often posting off the beaten track articles, about food, health, politics. He seems to think out of the box. He's funny, engaged. He takes really interesting & beautiful photographs. He's not really my friend, but I identify with him a little bit, I kind of wish he was my friend. He seems like a wise searcher, which seems like a smart way to live in the world.
And he lives in the shadow of his famous father, but you know what? I do too. So we have that in common. John Lennon is still such a strong figure/presence in my life. When I think of music I think of him.
Anyway, this is a long way around to a recent article that Julian posted, which is typical of the insightful kind of things he likes to post. This one is from an Ogala Lakota Chief, Luther Standing Bear.
"Everything was possessed of personality, only differing from us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature learns, and that was to feel beauty. We never railed at the storms, the furious winds, and the biting frosts and snows. To do so intensified human futility, so whatever came we adjusted ourselves, by more effort and energy if necessary, but without complaint." - Luther Standing Bear